I’ve been leafing through the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs list and I might post another time about how the list is dumb and how it could be better, what I’d put on it, etc, but it’s also got me listening to some songs I haven’t heard for a while.

Particularly some Sam Cooke stuff (“Dream Lover” and “Chain Gang” are just classic), Marvin Gaye (“Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” is a great song), Ronettes (“Be my Baby,” classic Phil Spector), Chuck Berry (“Maybellene,” the recording is crap and the verses are throwaway but the chorus makes it worth the listen), and Ray Charles (“What I’d Say,” I can’t get over the sounds from the keyboard and the band (and that crazy breakdown) in this recording).

But the most astounding track that I’m listening-to-again-for-the-first-time is “Tracks of my Tears” by Smokey Robinson. Dylan may have written world-changing protest songs and the Beatles sold a trillion records, including some that had meaningful songs, but I don’t think I’ve heard another song from that era with as much tortured-soul emotion in it. What gets me is that it’s more than just the song. Songs that really get me now (for example, “You will miss me when I burn” by Palace Brothers and “Sodom, South Georgia” by Iron & Wine) are delivered pretty flatly; the singer’s voice may crack or be whispered or whatever, but Smokey’s voice is a wail, a cry. Other people could sing this song but in part it’s his voice that makes this song great.

We had our work Christmas dinner at Kuleto’s in Burlingame. It’s a pretty fancy Italian place with good food and the service was, well, unnoticable (in a good way–unobtrusive and my food just sort of appeared). We did a gift exchange. It was one of these things where you can pick a present or take someone else’s present and people kept taking my presents, except I ended up being able to take anyone’s present at the end. I got something pretty sweet.

When I found out about the company party last week I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go to Iron and Wine scheduled for the same night, the tickets for which I bought in September. Then I figured if the party ended by 10pm in Burlingame, I could be at the concert by 10:25 or so and if the concert started at 9 and there was an opening band or two, I would be alright. Turns out I missed about 15 or 20 minutes. I gave Judit a call as I was on my way up and she made her way over from where she was in the Haight to go to the show. She was ‘on call’ for the show.

It was just Sam Beam and the acoustics in Great American were great. He did some great versions of his own songs, not necessarily sticking to how he recorded them. He did a few of his songs that are unreleased (one of which I liked a lot, but I can’t remember for the life of me enough about it to look it up on the internet). He also did a few covers, one of which was of course “Such Great Heights” (Postal Service), which he closed the encore with and Judit just about died, and the other, more surprising one was “Love Vigilantes” (New Order). A really solid concert overall. I wish I’d seen all of it.